One Month in Cebu!

Family,


Thanks for the dear elders. I did get them. Mom, you almost didn’t email me in time. When I was reading dads yours showed up. Thanks for the pictures. They work out great this way. That is exciting that Eric is on varsity tennis! My bigger than me little brother is a stud! And varsity soccer! Elder Clark is super good at soccer. He was planning on playing after high school but got taken out pretty bad in one of his last games and hasn’t been able to play since. I guess his ankle got messed up bad.

In the Cebu City zone we have 11 different areas. We only have one ward. Cebu city has so many people. They cram so many people into a small house, like the size of our dining room. On the other side of the wall is the neighbor’s living room. They are packed in so tight. It gets really dirty. But out in the bukid it is a lot better. They often times have nicer, larger houses with a yard. But they build everything on the steep hillsides. It’s crazy. I’ll send you a picture some time. I’ll try to get them developed today. Yes there is air conditioning in the chapel. They call it air con. It gets freezing during sacrament meeting! Back home when I would hear that it was going to be 20 degrees Celsius on the Canadian station I was excited it would be a nice day. Now 20 degrees is freezing! I have a hard time. I feel bad for the Filipinos. Often times they speak English, Cebuano, and Tagalog at church. They are supposed to speak all in English, but it doesn’t always work out that way. They speak English really well in the city. Not so well out of the City. We are teaching one investigator in English, he is originally tagalog, and Elder Clark talks to him in Cebuano. It is interesting. Here in the city they mix all three languages in common talking. I don’t notice so much. I just keep smiling, praying that someday I will understand. It is getting a lot easier. I am finding that some things I can say without thinking about them. It just feels natural. Other times I say things all wrong. Oh well. It is fun. We have a gospel principles class that usually has 8 to 10 people. Two are recently baptized. And usually someone will show up that we don’t know. That is always nice.

The work is picking up. President promised us that if we get our key indicators that the mission has set, we will average 3 baptisms a month. We are working hard and have a lot of prime investigators,

Ritchie and Irene both are being baptized on the 25. We got permission from her father last Saturday. That is a cool story. Apparently he is crazy and a drunkard and chases people out with machetes, but he ended up being really receptive after we talked to him. We are going to go back and talk to him and hopefully teach him how to read and write. He lives in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It is down from the waterfall about 1.5 miles. It’s a good hike. It took us 1.5 hours to get there the first time because we took the long trail around. We took the district back there today for p-day because it is so beautiful. I love it!

We have 2 sisters who are committed to baptism, but they still need their father’s permission. Their mother referred them, and she is inactive, and now they are more active than she is. Doesn’t really make sense to me. But I think they will be baptized. Their names are Kelly and Esmey.

We also have another couple who are very receptive and are willing to be 100% if they find out it is true. Melinda and Luey Uzah. They would do so well with the gospel.

We also have one more who says he will be baptized if he finds out the book of Mormon is true. He is all about the bible though and doesn’t think we need anything more. We will see. Brother Jerico.

Also Archie, Maria, and Erwin have a good chance at being baptized. They all are possible investigators, just hard to catch up with. It is hard when their phones don’t work and they don’t have answering machines.

Did you get the TV from Wal-Mart? If so I know the exact one it is. It will look nicer with HD cables, but we don’t have anything that is HD, so don’t worry about it.

I love you all, Take care!
Love,
Elder Schenk